CAO Bakery & Cafe — Restaurant in North Bay Village

We stopped by this beautiful new bakery in our neighborhood to see what they had to offer. We were pleasantly surprised at the huge selection of bakery goods. North Bay Village has been in need of a larger bakery. There is also a comfortable dining area for coffee and sandwiches. Not only that, but you can also bring your best fur-baby friend inside. This is all great news for NBV.

We decided to get something for dinner, so we did a take-out. We ordered a Cuban sandwich for me, and my daughter got the Croissant Ham and Cheese. Both tasted very well. A suggestion for the Croissant would be to put those in a larger container so that the sandwich isn't all crushed by the time you get home. See my photo showing how pathetic it looked when we got home.

The cookies were good but could be better tasting by adding some cream cheese frosting to the Red Velvet cookie. It was a bit dry. The M&M cookie was fine.

The reason for 4 stars instead of 5 is because the Guava pastelitos were over-cooked/baked at too high of a temperature, and the pastry was not flaky as it should be. We are huge fans of guava pastelitos and know how they should taste and feel. We have been to other Miami bakeries where they are perfection. We know this is a new bakery in our area, and I'm sure with a little more time, their pastelitos will be perfect also. We will still be going back here to try other pastries sandwiches.

Parking is easily accessible in front of the bakery for free. Wheelchair accessability is also available. They are located in a very nice updated strip mall that is on the...

The products here are pretty good, but don't come here if you're in any kind of hurry. They will take their sweet time, which is very Miami, in their defense.

The other, much bigger problem is that they seem to be obsessed with using the Cuban names for different coffee types. And I don't mean cafecito and cortadito. I spent a good 10 minutes listening to two different Cuban people explain what a cappuccino is to me (which is a laugh both because cappuccino is not a Cuban style coffee and also because what they brought me was just hot milk dumped into a cafecito, not a cappuccino) and completely ignoring me the three times I told them that the word "cappuccino" never left my mouth when I was ordering (even the receipt says I didn't order a cappucino).

I don't mind Cuban coffee. When I go to a real Cuban cafe, I know what to expect. But don't have "coffee" and "cappuccino" on your menu if you don't know what they are. It's like you're more concerned with making people feel bad than you are with giving them what they ordered.

And finally, not necessarily a bad thing, but fair warning, this is one of those "special" places that charge you 3% extra for using any kind of card. The signs said credit card, but the cashier told me they'll charge me for using a debit card, too, which is actually against the regulations of Visa and Mastercard. A bit shady...

We were so excited to have this bakery open since there are no Cuban bakeries in the area. Unfortunately, it isn’t run like other Cuban bakeries. It can take 10-15 minutes to get pastries after you order. Usually in other places they box as you go and at the end of your order you just pay. Here you lay first and then they spend 15 minutes looking at the receipt trying to figure out what you ordered. Twice I’ve gotten home with missing items and disappointed family. Today at 9 am they sold all the bread to one customer and had no more bread for the day. This is a wanna be Cuban bakery stand. Get it together Vicky! This isn’t the staffs fault it’s the owners for setting up such a poor system. Besides everything tastes like it was precisely frozen and not made from...